


The Density of a Material Inversely

by sariagray



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Post Reichenbach, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sariagray/pseuds/sariagray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, the work is done for you and your debts are left unpaid. What then? Before the reunion, after the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Density of a Material Inversely

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by analineblue. Title and quote come from a Google search, and an answer from a WikiAsk page, that I could not properly source beyond the blurb provided in the Google summary.

_A difference in temperature usually affects the density of a material inversely._

 

Two cigarettes left. Sherlock crumples the packet and tosses it on the ground. He thinks better of it soon after and reaches down to pick it up, dusts the bits of sand-and-salt, of ice, off of it. The cellophane is wet, and the cigarettes are bent, but it’s fine. All fine.

Winter is cold in a way that he’s not felt before, not since he was young and jacketless, eager for snow. He’s not eager for it now, nor is he without his coat, and he feels so much older than he ever has before – and not in a way that makes sense with the progression of time (three years; a blip, nothing more). 

The gravel-ice-salt-sand crunches underneath his shoes. They’re worn now, but not unusable. Besides, there isn’t time for new shoes. Or money. He grips the packet of cigarettes (two) to his chest before slipping them into his breast pocket. 

(There is time. There is money. He just refuses to accept any of it.)

It’s dark. Winter nights usually are, but there are clouds overhead and the streetlamps in this section of the city are dingy and dim, coated as they are with grime. It’s a familiar place, and yet it isn’t. The graffiti has changed – he sees his name occasionally, interspersed with a lingo he doesn’t recognize, sometimes misspelled – and the faces that peer from shadowed corners are strange, more moon-pale and wide-eyed.

He walks. He walks for hours, looking for something (nothing left to look for).

Moran has been dead for seven days. Shot, through the head, in a lush hotel room in Dubai. He had been shrouded in immaculate linens, the entrance wound cleaned – postmortem – with rubbing alcohol (90% solution). There had been a peculiar sheen of tenderness about the day-old scene that shocked him when he arrived, his own pistol at the ready.

A note had been pinned to a fold of cloth over Moran’s chest. 

_The sword was at your neck. I removed it. You’re not dead._

He reads it and crumples it in his hand. He keeps it all the same.

(They aren’t equal, are not squared away. Not really. The pent-up tension from the hunt still stiffens his shoulders. Hers had relaxed in relief.)

He doesn’t have gloves anymore; he left them – somewhere. A shop, a gutter, a restaurant, a train. Doesn’t matter. His fingers are thick and numb with cold. He wants to dial out, call someone (Lestrade, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, even. John), but he can’t get his hands to cooperate. And he doesn’t know if anyone would pick up.

(Why would they? He’s dead, and his number has long since been blocked.)

He turns a corner, walks for a time, and then turns another. More walking. Another corner. Across a street. He moves for what feels like hours, his muscles too distressed to ache with either use or cold. He contemplates lighting a twisted cigarette, but no – not good, not right now. 

Moran had been the last to find and, through some trick of fate, had eluded Sherlock in the end. He thinks of calling Irene, too, of telling her that this had been personal – that this wasn’t mere cleanup, that it was vengeance: bloodlust-red and metallic and righteous. That her hand in Moran’s death has made every sharply painful moment of the past three years pointless.

But he doesn’t. Not just because of his (temporary, inopportune) inability to work a simple mobile, but because he understands the weight of a debt (the cloying, heavy weight of his own debt that still crowds the space between his temples) and the sick feeling that persists before it is paid (to himself, to Moriarty, to John).

He was Sherlock’s to kill. Moran was _his_.

The streets are empty of crowds, but bright now with better lighting and flashier, well-kept signs. He keeps walking, grips the packet of cigarettes in his pocket (once, twice) and then he lets go. He thinks of tea with a reverent fondness that once would have been laughable, but now – now, it hurts. (He is not starving; he ate last night, and he drank water not a couple of hours earlier, but the warmth and comfort of the thought of tea alone makes the cold strikingly bitter in contrast.)

He walks past 221 Baker Street without looking. It will be dark – far past the hour at which Mrs. Hudson retires to her bed, and no one lives upstairs anymore if his network is to be believed (they are). C would not be rented out if B is still available. So. No point in looking.

(He glances, just once, anyway.)

John, it seems, had moved out not months after Sherlock’s fall, though the rent for their flat had been paid to Mrs. Hudson in full for many years in advance. He wonders that she shouldn’t keep that money and try to find tenants despite it. Sentiment, he supposes. He is grateful even as he scowls to himself, alone on the empty streets.

He arrives, soon enough, at Molly’s door without having meant to go there. He knocks against it with his fist; it’s rough on his dry, weathered knuckles.

“Just a tick!” 

Her voice is muffled, soft, but he still feels something within him ease at the sound of it. The door slowly shifts open, the chain still attached as though a bit of poor metal could keep danger at bay. 

“Yes?” She looks out at him, and gasps.

He notes her wide eyes and dropped jaw with something like the wry disdain that was once familiar, and he smiles through chapped, painful lips.

“Hello, Molly.”

The door closes quickly on his face and, before he can begin to be disheartened, he hears the chain slide through and the door is thrown open once more.

“Oh God. Oh. You’re alive.”

Half pulled, half stumbling, he’s brought over her threshold into a warmth that is startlingly solid after the cold. His eyes and nose thaw enough to water unpleasantly and he sniffs.

“It’s been – it’s been almost a year since you last – you didn’t answer my texts and I thought you were dead. I mean, everyone already thought you were dead, but – you look – you’re freezing. I’ll make tea, um, yes, tea. Sit down. Please.”

She flees into the kitchen and he settles onto the sofa next to the cat (Tommy? Timmy? Tony?). He pulls out his cigarettes and lighter, warmed with whatever body heat he had to give, and lights one in the middle of her sitting room. The smoke stings his throat raw. It’s glorious.

Molly pops her head around the kitchen half-wall.

“Did you want sh – what are you – are you smoking?” She frowns, opens her mouth as though to tell him off, then sighs, resigned. “I’ll find something to use as an ashtray, I guess.”

Sherlock revels in her predictability. 

He can feel his fingers tingling by the time she returns with a preposterously large mug and a small dish. She sets both on the table in front of him.

“Don’t get ashes on my carpet,” she says; it would sound demanding, angry, in any voice other than hers. 

He can feel her watching as he stubs his cigarette out on the saucer and wraps his hands around the mug. It is deliciously hot, so wonderful that he wants to crawl into it and luxuriate. (A bath. That’s what he needs. Or at least, a very hot shower. God, he’d kill for it.) She lets him take three solid swallows before she crosses her arms in front of her chest.

“You just disappeared without saying anything. Did you – is it done, then?”

“The Woman.” 

Molly frowns. “I’m sorry?”

“The Woman – Irene Adler – she killed Moran. The last one. The one – the One.”

“Oh, that’s – that’s good then, isn’t it?” 

Sherlock slams the mug down so hard that both Molly and the cat jump, and the cigarette rolls off its makeshift ashtray. Anger burns hot in him, and it’s good – it heats his bones, his muscles, his skin until he’s flushed with it.

“Oh, yes, of course it is,” he snarls. “I needed…information from him, I needed to know if there were any others, what his plans were. Now there’s nothing. I’m five steps behind again!”

Molly breathes deep and sits down next to him, so tentatively that he barely feels the cushions shift. Her voice, when it comes, is small and yet, surprisingly, unwavering and strong.

“He’s safe, though. John’s safe now. Isn’t he?”

“It was all in vain,” he says, but his shoulders slump and he can feel the taut lines of his face soften. 

She smiles at him. It’s gentle and hesitant, and it still manages to douse the last bit of fire within him. They sit like that, in silence, as Sherlock drinks his tea and relights his cigarette. Molly stares at the wall, and then pets her cat, and fiddles with the cushion behind her back. It’s not completely uncomfortable, as silences go, but it’s tenuous – stretched thin.

She takes his mug when he finishes it, and he looks up at her as she stands. He looks, really looks, and sees the smudged purple under her eyes and the light wrinkles at their corners. Her lips are as pale as her face, and her hair is tucked into a sloppy bun. She’s wearing a tee shirt and sweatpants and utilitarian slippers. She seems somehow older, more worn out, than he remembers her being a year ago.

She says, “I thought you were dead,” and then retreats into the kitchen once more. 

He reflects on that as he puts out his cigarette for the final time, his eyes focused on nothing (focused inward), wonders distantly if that is what has aged her, or if something else had happened in his absence from London. He could figure it out – would normally jump at the opportunity to do so – but he is still too frozen inside to be bothered.

Her shadow falls on him, and he looks up at her again. (Always looking _up_ , when did that happen?) She tucks an errant piece of hair behind her ears. It curls – he hadn’t expected that. 

“Have you, um, have you seen him yet? John?”

Sherlock says no, his mouth forms the word, but no sound comes out. He clears his throat, tries again.

“No. No. I haven’t. I can’t. I – he’s – no.”

Molly, bizarrely, looks like she’s about to laugh even though her eyes are glistening and sad. It’s a peculiar look that doesn’t sit well on her face. She doesn’t laugh, though. She doesn’t say anything at all. She simply goes to her cupboard and removes a blanket and pillow. She places it next to him on the sofa and leaves, turning out the light on her way.

A moment or two later, and the cat follows her to her room. 

**End**


End file.
